The present disclosure generally relates to high-bandwidth optical communication and, more particularly, to optical connectors and optical couplings for fiber-to-chip optical connections.
Benefits of optical fiber include extremely wide bandwidth and low noise operation. Because of these advantages, optical fiber is increasingly being used for a variety of applications, including, but not limited to, broadband voice, video, and data transmission. Connectors are often used in data center and telecommunication systems to provide service connections to rack-mounted equipment and to provide inter-rack connections. Accordingly, optical connectors are employed in both optical cable assemblies and electronic devices to provide an optical-to-optical connection wherein optical signals are passed between an optical cable assembly and an electronic device.
As the bandwidth of optical transceiver devices increases (e.g., up to 100 Gbps per channel) by advanced techniques such as silicon-based laser systems and wavelength division multiplexing, large amounts of data must be electronically transferred from the active devices and associated electronics to electronic components of the computing device (e.g., a data switching device of a data center) for further processing. Further, the size of optical transceiver devices (e.g., laser diodes, photodiodes) continues to decrease, which presents challenges in maintaining proper alignment between a chip-based transceiver device and the optical connector to which it is connected. Accordingly, alternative optical communication systems are desired.